In a major ruling today, the US Supreme Court has handed the Environmental Protection Agency a serious and necessary defeat. The case concerns landowners who wanted to build their dream home on a plot of land they had bought for the purpose. The EPA swooped in and told the landowners, Chantell and Michael Sackett, that it would not allow them to build, claiming that the land was a “wetland.” It wasn’t. The couple tried taking the EPA to court, but the EPA ruled that they had no right to go to court, and had instead to deal only with the EPA — which had already ruled against them and was set to impose huge fines that threatened to bankrupt them. SCOTUS gave the EPA the back of its hand.

The justices unanimously rejected the U.S. government’s position that individuals or companies must first fail to comply with an EPA order and face potentially costly enforcement action before a court can review the case.

The opinion by Justice Antonin Scalia was a victory for an Idaho couple who challenged a 2007 EPA order that required them to restore a wetland they had filled with dirt and rock as they began to build a new vacation home near Priest Lake. They were also told to stop construction on the home.

The couple, Chantell and Michael Sackett, denied their property had ever contained a wetland and complained they were being forced to comply with an order without a court hearing.

Their appeal drew support from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers, the National Association of Home Builders and General Electric Co, a company that had made a similar challenge to the EPA compliance orders.

The Supreme Court’s ruling comes at a time when the EPA has faced fierce criticism from many Republicans in Congress who say it has issued the most ambitious clean air regulations in decades and has become heavy-handed in enforcement actions.

Scalia concluded the Sacketts may bring a civil lawsuit under the Administrative Procedures Act to challenge the EPA’s order.

Bryan Preston has been a leading conservative blogger and opinionator since founding his first blog in 2001. Bryan is a military veteran, worked for NASA, was a founding blogger and producer at Hot Air, was producer of the Laura Ingraham Show and, most recently before joining PJM, was Communications Director of the Republican Party of Texas.

34 Comments, 21 Threads

Wow. This is a huge victory for property owners, thank you SCOTUS. I’ve been following this story for a while and it’s really unconscionable what this couple has been through.

What this does is lets owners go straight to court over a ruling by the EPA, instead of being dragged through their appeals process, all the while being fined into oblivion. In practicality, a small business or homeowner simply can’t afford to fight the EPA because they’re running up enormous fines the entire time they’re trying to do so. It’s nothing but pure intimidation, which forces people to immediately do what the EPA wants as homeowners literally can’t afford to take the chance of losing.

Thanks, indeed. But more can be said, if not to the Court. This gives the Sacketts a chance to bring a civil lawsuit, but do they have ANY money left after this fiasco? The Supremes didn’t give them court costs.

This is only a beginning. What needs to happen is for Congress to make overzealous officials personally liable for their actions. This was not a “mistake.” Making the government liable does nothing to prevent future regulatory overreaches.

The justices unanimously rejected the U.S. government’s position that individuals or companies must first fail to comply with an EPA order and face potentially costly enforcement action before a court can review the case.

I wonder if this might come into play when the Court makes its ruling on Обамаcare: MUST we first have to go through the horrendous Tax/Penalty/Mandate BS thing first before, or will they go ahead and rule?
Let it be the latter, and let SCOTUS layeth the smack down and strike the whole thing!

What is needed is a independent government branch to automatically put in motion methods for compensation when an Executive Branch agency is ruled to have abused power, rather than make citizens continue to fight their own nation or state in court. Said compensation, naturally, would first come out of said guilty agency’s budget, then general funds if the amount of damages was greater.

Said compensation, naturally, would first come out of said guilty agency’s budget, then general funds if the amount of damages was greater.

Yes. Instead of simply turning to the taxpayers to pay for their abuse of power, they should have to live within their appropriated funds remaining for the fiscal year after having the damages paid from their budget. That would likely mean layoffs of government employees (oh, the humanity) but that should be the price for abusing their power. I would mandate that those employees most responsible for the abuses be the first fired.

I would also like to point out that Saint Barack of HopenChange could have stopped this anytime he wanted to during the last three years. He chose not to. And since it went to the Supreme Court, I would look askance on any claims that he had no way of knowing.

I mean, we have certainly become aware that the DOJ will drop executive agency action against folks on whom cases have basically been won (i.e., New Black Panthers) , so I don’t think it would have been too much beyond the pale for either Bush the Compassionate or Obama the Uniter to actually stop pushing for new laws suitable to their respective party’s reelection efforts and take a moment and check and see if the branch of government they are actually charged by the Constitution with overseeing and running (vice being a party head, vice being the chief pusher for new laws and programs)–well it would be nice if they took a moment or two from all that other really important stuff and every so often examined if their branch was trying to grind the people under its heels via administrative action.

But apparently that is too much to ask for from a President these days.

And for all of you who are thinking of voting for Obama to “teach the establishment a lesson” and other such idiotic thinking or are just planning to stay home because your favorite didn’t run or didn’t win, please take a moment to consider Scalia and Thomas’ age and consider who might get to appoint their successor(s).

Art you’re a person who’s claimed to have been a long term GOP apparatchik. You can’t see the forest for the trees. You may be a small sapling yourself.

That, a pricked conscience and grotesque self-interest, I think explains your case of the vapors the other day when you claimed I was bullying and bombastic. It isn’t bullying to see to it that no risible comment in support of Romney goes unanswered, and neither does one of the few relevant kneel. Bombastic would I think be Reliapundit, who the other day couldn’t keep his caps lock off.

You’ve just claimed that the issue of who Obama would appoint to SCOTUS is an iron clad reason to vote for him.

I know of no reason, to judge from age and apparent health, to suppose the O will have an opportunity to replace a conservative Justice with a liberal. It is more likely he will replace a liberal with whomever the Republicans in the Senate let through. Should he make an unacceptable appointment to a currently conservative Justice’s seat, the R held the Senate is under no obligation to honor that appointment, and given Reid’s approach, I’d rather they did not. It would be a breach of faith if they did.

Romney has no history of advancing the ball in his court appointments. He has no record of trying. He has a record of holding and enacting opinions of what is proper for government to try do which are anathema to the Constitution. Gun control, for example.

Its also true that people who prioritize the SCOTUS are not playing the long game they think they are.

The goal I have is avoiding Stephen Green’s nightmare of abrupt default and hyperinflation. I believe we take less damage coasting through a second Obama term than if the Republicans, largely backing Romney, who got us into this mess resume business as usual.

Because it has worked well for them so far, 3 1/2 years in! Even if SCOTUS made a ruling a day for the rest of the Great and Powerful Ozbama’s reign, they won’t scratch the surface of the unconstitutional regulations foisted on the American people by this merry band of Marxists! It’s going to take a lot of Roundup to pull us out of the weeds!!

Weregild commented, “What is needed is a independent government branch to automatically put in motion methods for compensation when an Executive Branch agency is ruled to have abused power, rather than make citizens continue to fight their own nation or state in court. Said compensation, naturally, would first come out of said guilty agency’s budget, then general funds if the amount of damages was greater.”

I like, and let me suggest a tweak: Have the compensation panel determine the percent of culpability of each bureaucrat who had anything to do with the abuse of discretion, and make each pay their GS level times $5000 or so. So a GS-10 would pay a fine or penalty of $50,000. And the agency head would pay a minimum of ten grand even if he/she wasn’t directly involved in the case, for being a derelict manager.

The EPA legal department must have missed the lectures on the 5th and 14th Amendment in law school. Apparantly the EPA believes that it is above that little item called “Due Process” specifically included in the U.S. Constitution to curb the power of “over mighty central government.”

By preventing the Sacketts the use their land in this manner the EPA was, in effect, confiscating their property without due process. For centuries “due process” has meant “notice and a hearing” in court. (Note – “In court.”) The EPA seeems to have taken the position that it’s internal administrative process is the equivalent of a judicial hearing before a common law court thus rendering such a proceeding unnecessary.

This must have been too much even for Breyer, Kagan, Sotomayor and Ginsburg. The EPA was, in effect, telling the courts of the U.S. to butt out in matters involving private land use. The wonder is that this case had to go all the way to SCOTUS to be resolved.

Actually, government officials who willfully violate the rights of citizens should be tried for “High Crimes and Misdemeanors” with the punishment being minimally felonious and disenfranchising and maximally capitol; because those people shouldn’t be allowed to vote, much less serve, and some of them should be hung on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

In the case where a government official is convicted of a High Crime or Misdemeanor, any injured party who seeks damages should be able to name both the government and the bureaucrat as defendants in civil proceedings; and they should be awarded damages commensurate with the damage done by the overreaching official. That’ll get tricky with stuff like Fast and Furious unless the government admits to the statistical value of a life.

Congrats to the Sacketts and to my colleagues at the Pacific Legal Foundation who represented them. This unanimous decision means that the EPA isn’t above the law — it can’t threaten property owners with financial ruin without justifying those threats in court. Perhaps the EPA will be a tad more circumspect in declaring dry land to be wetlands if it has to actually defend itself.

Note the Reuters article says “The opinion by Justice Antonin Scalia was a victory for an Idaho couple who challenged a 2007 EPA order that required them to restore a wetland they had filled with dirt and rock as they began to build a new vacation home near Priest Lake. They were also told to stop construction on the home.”

Reuters in typical MSM fashion makes it sound like these evil people who could afford a vacation home are destroying the environment and SCOTUS is just letting them get away with it.

Nevermind that nearly half the court is liberal and they smacked EPA around as well. Can’t wait to read Scalia’s opinion.

The Sackett case has some aspects that make EPA’s power grab actually worse than described.

Land use jurisdictions are normally at the lowest level of government, in this case the county. The Sacketts had bought a platted lot in an approved subdivision, on which neighbors had already built homes.

EPA’s invasion of county jurisdiction was indeed an Executive branch power grab, a serious violation of our constitutional form of government. It was one of the ‘unintended consequences’ of Nixon’s environmental legislations, but was a logical extension of use of green laws as a club to beat property owners.

Cheers to the Supreme Court – I’m flabbergasted that even Sotomayor and Ginsburg saw reason in this case, since they’re likely to attempt to uphold Obamacare, which is just another invasion of our ancient liberties by authoritarian government.

And cheers to the Pacific Legal Foundation, which has provided the legal horsepower to rescue the Sacketts from at least this instance of tyranny, if not for the enormous expenses of pursuing justice as far as they have had to go.

Whether the Sacketts could challenge not only the EPA’s authority to regulate their land under the Clean
Water Act, but also, at this pre-enforcement stage, the terms and conditions of the compliance order, is a question
today’s opinion does not reach out to resolve. Not raised by the Sacketts here, the question remains open for another day and case. On that understanding, I join the Court’s opinion.

So she’s not saying she disagrees with the EPA regulating anyone’s property, just that she agrees people can sue.

Thank you for pointing out this house was to be built in a sub-division with other houses already in place on the lots all around theirs. As I understand it there was already water and sewer hookups to the property too. Had this been a case of someone building a house on property out in the woods away from everything and not doing their homework before hand then the EPA might have had a case but this was ridicules.

I’ve followed the story but haven’t read the pleadings. I’ve seen this run by administrative agencies under Alaska’s Administrative Procedures Act which is subtantively based on the federal APA. The explicit language of the law says a final administrative determination is appealable to the Superior Court. This can be read to mean that only a final determination can be taken to court and one must wait until all administrative appeals are exhausted. If you try to bolt to court, well, the courts don’t want the business if they can help it so you are burdened with proving that you will suffer irreparable harm by waiting or that continuing the administrative appeal would be futile. I’ve had this ploy used on me when I was representing the government itself as the administrative agency wanted to keep the issue in play so that it would be trade goods in the upcoming gubernatorial election. And, if you didn’t know, appeals by the government are nothing more than trade goods in politics.

This is how the federal agencies are used to shake down businesses and other interests. They do an administrative investigation and find you’ve been bad. If you think you’ve not been bad, you have to fight your way through their administrative appeal process, which is never anything other than The Gong Show because the agency is never going to conclude it did you wrong, but it costs time and money to get through it. Then after you lose, you can appeal them to court, but the government has lots of lawyers they pay every two weeks whether they do anything or not, so they just grind you into bankruptcy with discovery and motion practice. Or, you can just accept that evah so generous consent decree they offer you and partner with their “friends” at the Sierra Club, ACORN, Rainbow Push, or whatever interest group that the Democrats have assigned to loot you.

Isn’t the EPA “rights denied” model typical of the IRS and other federal agencies? You’re guilty until proved innocent and your only recourse is to comply. (“Resistance is futile.”) Meanwhile the government proceeds to destroy lives, reputations and financial reserves.

One of the rewards of having a Republican controlled Congress for awhile was that the IRS now has the burden of proof. That said, any government can just grind an individual to dust if they have a hard-on for you. I did a lot of “German Choice” resignations, and they’d always say they were going to grieve or sue if we did anything to them. I’d just tell them point blank, “yeah, you might even win, but what are you going to do for the year or two that you have a bad reference, a dismissal on your record, have to sit out the “for cause” penalty period before you can even get unemployment and have to cash out all your savings and your retirement to pay a lawyer?” Most could see the wisdom of resigning “for personal reasons” and having a neutral reference.